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160 FIGURE 3.—OcenaSek's workshop and his first noiseless machine gun. SMITHSONIAN ANNALS OF FLIGHT FIGURE 4.—a, Ocenasek's aircraft rotary engine of 1908, which produced 12 hp at 600 rpm and weighed 165 lb (75 kg); b, his monoplane of 1910-1911, showing placement of rotary engine; c, control surfaces of the monoplane.
NUMBER 10 161 FIGURE 5.—Ludvik OcenaSek and Professor Hermann Oberth in Prague. his radial aircraft engine, he might be deprived of priority in his invention, and, therefore, concealed technical details. Only a single model has survived to the present day. It apparently is a second stage which still contains its unburned propellant charge. Ludvik Ocenasek's daughter has kept it, propellant charge and all, in her household for nearly 40 years. Chemical analysis reveals that the propellant consists of ordinary gunpowder loaded in a specially shaped paper container which by its form consti tutes a nozzle. After further experimentation, Ocenasek is said to have devised a ground-launching apparatus to aid in overcoming the obstacles to rapid rocket acceleration. This equipment reportedly proved successful, and was tested by having it catapult a heavy sack of sand straight up into the air. Information on this device, however, has not yet been verified. Ludvik Ocenasek was obliged to foresake further investigation in the rocket field, owing to the depression of the 1930s, which caused him to lose his business enterprise and left him with no funds for such research. However he continued to believe in the feasibility of his idea—the transporting mail from Europe to America by rocket. He was certain it would be developed in the immediate future. In April 1930, The New York Sun carried an article on his activities in which he stated: Indeed, rockets with human crews (to quote the terminology of that time) are not improbable, although in this case many difficult problems concerning the physiological reactions of the human body will arise.s However, Ocenasek did not abandon his attempts to find some practical application of the jet propul sion principle. Since rocket flights were too fantastic for his time, he tried to adapt the reaction principle to powering a boat for shallow waters. He found support and encouragement in the Bata Shoe Company. The company welcomed a source of cheap motive power for its flat-bottomed river craft which delivered its footwear via the shallow unregulated rivers of central Europe. In 1933 he tested his first hydrodynamic boat (No. 1), a small craft on which the entire fourhorsepower power plant was mounted as an auxiliary power package. These trials proved promising. Streams of water were forced through jet nozzles placed just above the surface of the water in the river (see Figure 7). He subsequently constructed a larger boat (No. 2) weighing 1.4 metric tons to carry six passengers (Figure 7c). With the equipment still relatively unperfected, this craft achieved good results. With a draft of 7 inches (18 cm) it attained speeds of 9 miles per hour (14 kph) and above all displayed considerable towing potential for pulling barges, with unusual maneuverability. In 1935 the Czechoslovak armed forces ordered such a jet-powered boat (No. 3) from Ocenasek, and added it as an operational unit to its Danube River fleet. Under full load, the boat could cruise at 15 miles per hour (24 kph), developed a pull of 1650 pounds (750 kg) and could haul 300 metric tons of freight at 5 miles per hour (8 kph). A publicity film about Ocenasek's hydrodynamic boat was prepared at the time, but we have thus far been unable to find a copy. Latest reports suggest it may have been sent to Amsterdam. Further orders for boats came in. Ocenasek's son assembled four such boats in Poland; interest was expressed by Japan, Rumania, and the Netherlands. There exists a project design for a very large passenger-carrying river craft. But World War II and the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 put an end to all of Ocenasek's activities in this direction. Thus, his most outstanding technical achievement never was able to realize its potential. In the years just before World War II, however, Ocenasek had turned again to the technology of military weapons, out of a desire to improve the arsenal of Czechoslovakia's Army. And once again he worked with rockets. If we know little of his first generation of rockets, of the latter military ones we knew even less. Ludvik Ocenasek performed these experiments secretly in an unknown rock
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Appendix Considerations Concerning
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NUMBER 10 In the present case, ther
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Robert H. Goddard and the Smithsoni
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Recollections of Early Biomedical M
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FIGURE 4.—Presentation by Dr. Con
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NUMBER 10 83 But it should be recog
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10 Developments in Rocket Engineeri
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11 A Historical Review of Developme
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NUMBER 10 that the possibility of a
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